Application of reliability theory to highway geometric design

作者：Zhipeng Zheng · 发表于：cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · 年份：2009 · DOI：10.14288/1.0050310 · 被引用次数：16 · 研究领域：Infrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring、Geotechnical Engineering and Analysis

To improve road safety and to reduce accident costs, roadway geometries are frequently modified based on the relationship between deficient geometric elements and the recorded accidents. This remedial approach requires fatalities and injuries to occur before the needs and priorities of roadway improvements may be identified. Rather than adopt this approach, the present research took a preventive initiate in highway geometric design stage to detect, quantify and correct hazards prior to their being constructed. Highway geometric design is proposed to be performed in relation to vehicle dynamics. This is a major contribution from this research. The methodology was a reliability-based highway geometric design, similar to "limit state" design in structural engineering. It used probability of non-compliance with design criteria to identify drivers' behaviour responses to different design alternatives. This research focused on the development of a more correct representation of the driver-vehicle-roadway interaction - the Moving Coordinate System Design (MCSD) model, the establishment of an evaluation process for the safety level of an entire highway, the application of the "racing car model" as the upper operating limit, the development of VHVIS.PAC algorithm to utilize photolog data as the geometric design input for reliability analysis, and the incorporation of the growing knowledge of human factors into highway geometric design. The research applied reliability theory to geomet...